Two Years In A Start-Up, What Have I Learnt?

So today marks two years at Multiverse (Formely WhiteHat). TWO YEARS!

It's hard to believe that I joined a team of 52 and now we're pushing 200+ employees.

I'm not gonna lie; these past two years feel like five, even ten years when I think about the level of personal and professional growth I have had and the amount of impact and transformation the business has seen.

I joined as a Digital Marketing Coach, and today I'm proud to lead our Digital Pathway team.

Some of my favourite highlights over the last 24 months include:

• launching our single biggest digital marketing cohort with one of the world's largest's media groups and seeing the stories of each apprentice unfold over the course of the programme.
• building out the L3 Digital Marketing Programme and scaling the L4 Data Fellowship programme, helping to shape the delivery framework, which has led to industry-leading outcomes and 100% pass rate for the last quarter alone.
• delivery and coaching to hundreds of apprentices across bootcamps, training sessions, progress reviews and 121 sessions.
• getting our Series A funding and seeing its impact on what we could do and whom we could reach.
• moving our entire delivery team online in 9 days when COVID hit last March. A huge shoutout to our hugely resilient coach team who have been delivering all our training remotely for almost a year without a drop in apprentice experience and outcomes. ????
• getting my first set of EPA results through! Gosh, I remember it felt like GSCE results day for me, goodness knows how my apprentices felt, but it was such a joy to see my apprentices succeed.
• building the Digital Pathway and taking it from a team of 10 to a team of 54 in 10 months, managing three programmes (Digital Marketing, Data Fellowship, SWE as well as the Digital Academy). I have the BEST team of coaches and an incredible leadership team.
• creating and launching our in-house Digital Academy, where we are training exceptional individuals on a 90-day intensive programme to become Multiverse coaches. Welcome to Cohort Three who start today!
• being part of pitches, sharing why we do what we do, for amazing deals that we won.
• representing Multiverse in conversations, events and panels about diversity, inclusion, social mobility and more.

If I tell you that I almost didn't end up working here and it was a full one year from when I first started talking to Multiverse until I joined the company, you would be surprised. But I am glad things worked out, and if you ever want to hear the full story, I will tell you over a coffee :)

As much as I share all these wins, they were not done in isolation. I am grateful to be surrounded by an incredible group of people who inspire and motivate me every day and I am better because of it.

Over the past two years I have learnt so much about:

?? running and scaling a mission-led business from Multiverse's incredible founders (Euan Blair and Sophie Adelman) and Senior Leaders in the org (Jeremy Duggan and Lisa Barrett). The importance of having a clear mission and a sense of direction has meant that I have never once doubted where my role fits and how and where I contribute.

?? recruiting, building and onboarding big teams (my current team is bigger than the number of people at WH when I joined!) and why it is so important to hire A players the first time. This has been really key in helping me scale the team as well as having the right leaders, running the teams. You can't achieve big things on your own. Thank you, Marta, Laura, Neda, Gav and Claire.

?? The importance of values and culture. We live and breathe our values here at Multiverse. Ask anyone and they will roll off the tongue the ones that resonate most to them. For me "honest but kind", "we are all owners" and "integrity is paramount" are the ones that really stuck for me. I am an achiever, so results are always there, but being able to have honest but kind conversations when things are tough, is not always easy. Or having to pick up more things because things need to get done but there's no one around to do it. Or just doing what you say you will, day after day, even when it is hard. It is one thing to say these are your values but do you actually live them?

?? Operating from your strengths so you can thrive. This is the first job, where I get to operate in my core strengths every day. I am also fortunate to have managers who recognise my strengths and allow me to go deeper with them, whether it was the kind of projects or opportunities I am able to work on or the responsibility I am given. I am grateful to have people in the org who are huge allies and supporters, shoutout to Libby Dangoor, Tiff Werdmuller, Sophie Ruddock, Chloe Barker and Jen Holmes.

?? People and how incredible they are. Being able to support them on THEIR journey of development and growth. Whether it is an apprentice whom I needed to provide extra support for, to get through the programme, often when others had given up on them or seeing colleagues and members of my team develop and get promoted. I live for this stuff and why I love being a manager so much. I believe it's important to work with people you like and respect, I mean who wants to go to work and dislike the people they work with. No one. Especially in a lockdown!

And so I am grateful and also excited about what this next year holds.

To my team, peers, mentors and managers, thank you!

Here's to continuing to build an outstanding alternative to university, changing the status quo and building the next generation of leaders together.

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